


A Wolf in New Clothing

by voksen



Series: weird montreuil identity porn [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Clothing Kink, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Identity Porn, Illustrated, Kink Meme, M/M, Madeleine Era, Sexual Tension, et vla ma culotte
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-13 22:13:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/pseuds/voksen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Javert finds himself in need of new clothing in order to investigate a highly-placed suspect.  Madeleine finds himself in trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Wolf in New Clothing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vejiicakes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vejiicakes/gifts).



Madeleine has become almost used to Javert's presence; to seeing that uniformed figure on the streets of his town in the day; to seeing his shadow in the alleys at night, both of them keeping watch over the town; to facing him alone here, in his office, guarded by the armor of his reputation and his clothing - which, since the arrival of the detachment from Paris, has run exclusively to yellows and greens. He has schooled his face well to polite yet distant smiles and so far they have not failed him.

He offers one now, as Javert's report on the incidents of the week slows and falters to a stop. "Is that all, Inspector?" he asks, though his attention is more on the paper in front of him: he has been taking notes on the Inspector's practiced recitation, on the location of the many small and varied thefts, solved and unsolved.

Javert does not answer at once, however, and after a few moments of silence Madeleine takes his eyes from his work and his mind from its planning and looks up. The sight that confronts him is unnerving in its unfamiliarity; his smile freezes on his lips as it had not since that first meeting - for Javert, normally a creature of iron habit, is frowning, his eyes on the floor in front of Madeleine's desk, an awkwardly foreign uncertainty in the set of his shoulders, the twist of his lips.

Madeleine sets his quill down delicately in its stand. "Inspector," he says again. "Is there something else?" The wolf curled inside his heart is snapping at its bourgeois collar, at the mayor's chain that gives it a dog's friendly grin, but his voice is steady enough, and Javert had not been watching his face.

Javert clears his throat. "Monsieur," he says, his gaze still fixed firmly on the floor. "On the matter of the smuggled goods I mentioned to you last week. I must inform you that I will have to remand it to the attention of the prefecture in Paris."

"Paris?" Madeleine says.

"Yes, monsieur." Javert's lips thin further still; he seems braced more as if approaching a firing squad than speaking of his work. "The business is deeper-rooted than it had appeared, but I have insufficient evidence to bring it to court. It needs further investigation."

The words _further investigation_ ring through Madeleine's heart like iron bells, a sullen, implacable warning. "Ah," he says. "Investigation that you cannot carry out yourself?"

If it is possible, Javert looks ever more uneasy. "Monsieur le maire," he says, "there have been certain signs that the - persons - responsible for receiving the goods are more highly placed than it seemed." He pauses; and, after a few moments' awkward silence, continues again: "Gathering the required evidence will require - close surveillance."

The idea of unknown police spies wandering about Montreuil-sur-Mer is even less appealing to Madeleine than it evidently is to Javert. "Inspector Javert," he says, and Javert's eyes finally rise from the floor, though they stop only about halfway up his desk. "Do you mean to tell me you feel incapable of this... _surveillance_ yourself? I had thought you quite able."

"No, monsieur." Now Javert's words are prompt again, and, though polite - as always - the familiar buried sternness is back as well; the ground feels almost safe once more. "But I am not equipped for it; to associate with suspects such as these for the purposes of gathering information, one must appear their social equal. One must dress as they do."

"This is - about clothing?" For want of a nail, Madeleine thinks, with a certain amount of horrified amusement. For want of a policeman's cravat, he might have risked-- no, he cannot think of it here, in Javert's presence, lest his thoughts betray him. "Well. If it is only that!"

"Monsieur le maire?"

Madeleine stands decisively, looking Javert over as he does. To be sure, he has looked at Javert often enough before, but not like this, never like this; always, before, as the wolf to the hound, never as a man to a man. Javert is tall and lean, broad in the shoulder and narrow at the waist; taller by several inches at least than Madeleine himself and far lankier. Offering him a loan of clothing, then, is patently impossible; he would look a fool in anything Madeleine owns. There is still another way. "You will not write to Paris, Inspector."

"But monsieur--"

"It is my civic duty as mayor," Madeleine says, "to see that you have what you need in order to protect the citizens and the law of this town. We will go to a tailor instead; you will have the clothes you need to do what must be done." It sounds reasonable enough, he thinks. And it is better to keep the devil he knows, even if he has to pay for the privilege.

Javert's face twitches; his mask is almost, but not quite, as good as Madeleine's own. "But Monsieur le maire--" he says again.

"I insist," Madeleine says, planting his hands on his desk. "We will go tomorrow - and we will go to Berck, so no gossip reaches the ears of your... suspects."

Javert's mouth closes abruptly on another half-formed protestation; Madeleine can almost hear his teeth snap shut and is glad they're not yet closing about his throat. His hat is crumpled in his hand. "Yes, monsieur," he says, though it sounds as if it costs him dearly to say it.

Madeleine scoops the sheets of notes from his desk and taps them together, then slips them safely into a drawer. "It is an oversight on my part, not yours, Inspector," he says. "I will make the arrangements now; you need only meet me outside the Mairie tomorrow morning - if the timing suits you?"

And what else can Javert say to that but: "Yes, Monsieur."

Javert appears - of course - at the Mairie early the next morning, as ordered. When Madeleine steps out to find him waiting by the carriage he has engaged to convey them both to Berck, however, he pauses a moment half-out of his doorway in surprise. The face is the same, of course, the scowl as forbidding as ever, the hair and whiskers unchanged - but Javert in plainclothes is nonetheless an altogether different man than Javert in uniform, as if his clothing is no less armor to him than Madeleine's. The clothes themselves are ordinary enough, perfectly serviceable if a bit old, but they do something (if only a very slight something) to soften the edges of their wearer; to make him look, if not quite approachable, at least not quite so fearsome, despite the danger that remains everpresent.

Madeleine finds his smile comes slightly more easily than normal. "Javert," he says, as he comes down the stairs. "I suppose I should not call you Inspector today - no?"

"You do not need to accompany me, monsieur," Javert says by way of answer.

Technically this is true - for Javert's purposes. "I insist on seeing my money well-spent," he says, and smiles again; the whole truth is that he insists on making sure Javert does not decide to report the need for spies to the prefect instead of visiting the tailor after all. Once the money is spent, he is certain he can trust in Javert's dogged honesty to see the matter through; before that - well.

Javert looks at him doubtfully, but it seems less suspicion than honest bafflement: as if he is incapable of coming up with any reason, let alone a nefarious one, why anyone should want to come with him.

Madeleine steps past him and opens the door of the carriage. "Monsieur Javert," he says; he gets another startled glance for it, but Javert climbs in without further protest. Madeleine provides the tailor's address to the driver, then follows him.

The drive is several hours and neither of them are avid conversationalists; they pass it mostly in silence. Madeleine contemplates alternately the state of the factory, his slowly-forming plans for attempting to alleviate some of the worst of the poverty Javert had unknowingly indicated to him the day before, and Javert himself. Javert occupies his time mostly in looking out the window, so it is safe enough to watch him.

The collar of his shirt is a little worn, Madeleine thinks; it is not as stiff as it might be, and not quite fashionable. It is distractingly - human. It forces him to think again of Javert as he had named him: as monsieur Javert, or simply Javert, and not as the Inspector or the adjutant-guard. The thought comes no less strangely than it had the day before; he prods at it as if it might bite him. It does not, nor does Javert turn to inquire what he is doing, and eventually Madeleine comes to an uneasy truce of sorts with it.

He had sent ahead the day before, after Javert had left him; by consequence of his office and fortune they are expected. Although the carriage had made good time, the tailor, one Monsieur Duchamp, is already waiting for them; he greets them as they enter with an expansive "Welcome, messieurs!" and then immediately descends on them with an air that reminds Madeleine inescapably of a chicken chasing after a fleeing insect.

Duchamp pecks at him first - touching his coat, holding out the sleeve, fingering at his waistcoat, tsking and shaking his head - and Madeleine holds still with some effort. Then it is over and the tailor is on Javert; here there are more disapproving noises and more touching. By the way Javert's chin goes up slightly, Madeleine suspects he is made equally uncomfortable; when Duchamp tugs rather too sharply at his cravat and Javert's eyes happen to catch his, his smile is rueful and surprisingly genuine. Javert blinks at him, but does not strangle, arrest, or even lay hands on the tailor. Madeleine counts it a success.

"Well!" Duchamp says, stepping back and clapping his hands. "I have just the thing in mind. Now, if you'll follow me --" He turns and skips off through a door in the back; with another bemused glance at each other, Javert and Madeleine follow.

The room is small - if the tailor had been as large a man as either of them, it might have been a close fit, but he is short and thin and weaves about them with something approaching grace, eyeing them in all angles from the mirrors fixed to the walls. "Your hats, your coats!" he says, and Madeleine obligingly removes his, handing them over; Javert is a moment behind. When they are both in their shirtsleeves Duchamp produces a roll of tape and begins to measure them, muttering arcane sets of numbers to himself.

Madeleine thinks of objecting, as he had had no intention of buying a new suit for _himself_ , his own being quite good enough, but the look on Javert's face - somewhere between mulishness and what looks like - like _amusement_ \- stops him. If his own minor travails put Javert in a good humor (and what a thing, to think of Javert _in a good humor_ \- Javert _amused!_ ) then he will suffer them gladly enough: it is far better to be laughed at than hunted.

And - it is funny, a little, that he finds himself trapped in the fringe of his own net. Duchamp slips about behind Javert, wraps the tape firmly about his waist, and squeezes - Javert's eyebrows go up comically - and Madeleine has to bite his lip to hold in a rare laugh.

He gets his own back a moment later when Duchamp takes the tape to his thighs and nearly knocks him over, small man or not. "Monsieur," he says in protest.

Duchamp holds up a hand imperiously. "Ah!" he says, and Madeleine falls abashedly into silence. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Javert smirking at him outright.

Another few sweeps of the tape and they are freed at last; he sees his relief echoed in Javert, but is not given long to ponder it: Duchamp finishes recording the measurements, disappears his pen and paper again, and turns back to them with a flourish.

"Messieurs," he says, tracing his eyes over them again as firmly and unmercifully as he had wielded his measure, "as I said, I have just the thing. It will be a work of art - _you_ will be works of art."

"Art," Javert says with rather heavy sarcasm.

"Art!" Duchamp insists, and turns to Madeleine. "You, monsieur. The trousers are fine, perfect. The coat - it is well _enough_. The color suits you admirably; the style is decent, the frock cut suits your chest, your shoulders; the waist ought to be tighter even with your build - but it might serve if you had none better. But the waistcoat is a crime!"

Javert scoffs; Duchamp ignores him in favor of patting at Madeleine's cravat and frowning like a thunderstorm. "You need color, monsieur. This dark gray does not suit you in the slightest. And here as well. It will open your face."

He is not sure he wants his face opened; he smiles anyway, instinctively; Duchamp turns to Javert and pokes at him instead, setting his hands on Javert's waist with an unthinking familiarity that has Javert's back stiffening visibly again. "And you," he says, "yes, monsieur, that you hide behind _these clothes_ is not only a crime but a _sin_."

Javert's face is - priceless. Madeleine wonders if he will ever forget it; if it is an image that will follow him through the days to come even when Javert is clad again in his forbidding uniform: a tiny crack in that armor, a reminder both humbling and dangerous.

"A vest," Duchamp says, patting at Javert's waist. "Yes, I think so. You hardly need one, monsieur; even without one your figure is quite correct, but with one - ah, yes." His hands travel up Javert's sides; Javert's brow creases (it cannot be, Madeleine thinks, that Javert is ticklish - to believe that is asking too much of him) and he steps back. Duchamp clicks his tongue reproachfully and turns to Madeleine as if seeking agreement. "A boned vest," he prompts. "Don't you think so, monsieur? To narrow the waist a bit more; to emphasize the hips, here--" he gestures emphatically but does not actually attempt to touch Javert again, "--and the breadth of the shoulders. Very fashionable, it will fit with the very newest styles."

"Ah... yes," Madeleine says. The idea of Javert as a fashion plate is still beyond him; whatever the tailor sees, as he peers at Javert again, rocking side to side to look at him from different angles once more, is a complete mystery. He sees only an exasperated man in a patched waistcoat and old shirt.

"But here I think gray will suit well," Duchamp continues. "Dark gray - almost that color, yes - and pearl. An antique ivory for contrast in the waistcoat - or perhaps a deep blue." He circles Javert again, muttering to himself. "Your hair, monsieur," he says when he has finished his turn and stands before them again. "If you would consider--"

"No," says Javert.

"But the fashion," Duchamp says, gesturing to Madeleine, who touches his own hair - which has curled unaccountably on its own ever since it grew out - in a minor fit of embarrassment.

"No," Javert says again.

And that is that; Duchamp sighs some more over them, then nods. "Very well, messieurs," he says; "three days - I must have three days before the fitting. I assure you I will work with all possible speed - I have put off everything and everyone else. Ah!" He stops in the midst of handing Madeleine back his hat and coat; Javert, having retrieved his already, has spent no longer in the shop than he had to. "You will," he says, leaning in although they are alone, "trust me in the matter of a shirt as well? I have the acquaintance of several fine seamstresses - the shirt will be done at the same time as the rest, you may be certain. Only, your friend's shirt, monsieur -- to wear it beneath my coats--"

"Please," Madeleine says, gently tugging the hat from Duchamp's hands. "Two shirts - and cravats as well." Javert's had been old as well and not quite pure white any longer, though well-starched and expertly tied; it would not suit a fine disguise. "Add it to the account." And, with that and a polite bow, he manages to escape in Javert's footsteps.

 

 

Three days' time sees them standing once again on Monsieur Duchamp's doorstep, both with an apparent reluctance to enter.

"I would not have taken you, monsieur -- Madeleine," Javert says, stumbling only slightly over his name, "for a man who pays much attention to the latest fashions."

They had spent another quiet carriage ride; had seen each other only in passing in the town, as two men who are often on the streets will tend to meet by coincidence. That Javert chooses to speak here, Madeleine thinks, is a matter of postponing the inevitable, and not truly an attempt to investigate. He wets his lips, glances sideways; Javert is staring at the tailor's door like it is the doorway to Hell. "I must look decent, if not fashionable," he says, "for the sake of the town; if it is to be respected, then its mayor must be respectable." He does not say: _I hope that I continue to surprise you, Inspector._

Javert glances over; it turns into a longer look, sweeping Madeleine from the top of his hat to the sole of his shoe with an unnerving thoroughness. "You do look respectable," he says, "monsieur."

Madeleine forces his tone to lightness despite the chill settling in his spine. "Apparently our good tailor thinks otherwise," he says, reaching for the doorknob and holding it open so that Javert has no choice but to go inside or leave Madeleine standing there awkwardly waiting on him. "And where one man finds fault, others may as well."

Duchamp is just as happy to see them as he had been before; it makes Madeleine wonder, as they're half-pushed into the fitting room once again, how much exactly his account will add up to in the end.

"Hats and coats, messieurs!" Duchamp says entirely too cheerfully. The low table wedged along the side of the room is today piled high with folded cloth in what seems to Madeleine to be as many colors as Joseph's coat; he stares at it uneasily while he unbuttons his coat and hands it over. Beneath a pile of white, green, blue, and yellow, there is a swatch of dull red; he should have thought to send a note back in privacy about the choice of colors. Protesting it now, with Javert in the room, is impossible.

When he has stripped them to their shirts, Duchamp selects an armful of white cloth. "Cravat too, monsieur," he says; and Madeleine obediently removes his cravat and helps the tailor settle the half-sewn waistcoat over his shoulders.

Javert has retired into the corner to stand as much out of the way as possible; he's smirking again already, quite obviously enjoying Madeleine's discomfiture as Duchamp's pins flash about him with remarkable speed, nipping the waistcoat closer at the sides and adjusting the length. It is not entirely white, Madeleine sees when he looks down to avoid Javert's eyes; there's a subtle pattern embroidered into it, cream thread on the white cloth. It looks like curls of some sort, though with the way Duchamp tugs the waistcoat about to get the proper fit he can't be sure.

The pinning goes on for several minutes before Duchamp is finally satisfied; he steps back to take a look, nods, and then returns to the table, shifts stacks about, and snatches up the pile of red cloth. Madeleine feels as if the morning's bread has turned to iron in his belly. He opens his mouth to say - what? What could he say? and then a second waistcoat is being shoved onto him. His shirtcuffs pinch at his wrists; he can feel his pulse racing beneath them. The color is darker, more a rich rusty brown than a true red up close; nothing like the bright smock he had known for nineteen years. The fabric is dense, thick, and fine; it is soft when it brushes for an instant against the side of his throat. It is not coarse, it does not scratch, it is not harsh with dried salt. He cannot smell the sea or the reek of dying men-- He tells himself this.

"Stand up!" Duchamp barks at him suddenly; Madeleine stiffens, the scars on his back pulling harshly, his shoulders tensed, and Duchamp bats at them. "You will ruin the line of the shoulders entirely. Come, stand as you normally do. I have not stuck you, have I? I have not pinned anyone in a decade!"

Madeleine finds his smile again. "No," he says. "No, you have not stuck me. Forgive me, it has been some time since I was last fitted." He is terribly aware of Javert's eyes on him; he hopes that the sweat he can feel chilling the nape of his neck is hidden by his collar.

"I can believe that," Duchamp mutters, but he returns to his work. When he has finished, the russet waistcoat fits tightly above the white-and-cream, exposing no more than an inch on any side, and Madeleine has mostly recovered himself - and the latter just in time, as Duchamp grips him by the arm and spins him around to face Javert in his corner. "There, monsieur!" he says, and Javert blinks, his smug satisfied grin falling away in surprise. "There. Look how the color opens his face!"

 _Do not look too closely,_ Madeleine thinks.

"See how it catches the colors here and here," Duchamp says, gesturing, but Madeleine is looking at Javert and not at him - as Javert is looking at Madeleine.

"I see," Javert says, but there is no suspicion in his voice and his expression, before his eyes slide away, is not quite one that Madeleine recognizes.

"A work of art," Duchamp tells the air, and sweeps a long coat from the remaining clothes.

To his eyes the new coat is not much different than his old one; the shade is somewhat darker and the skirt a bit shorter; the lapels perhaps a different angle, the shoulders broader and the collar higher. Like the waistcoats it is only basted together, but Duchamp seems to have gone at it with a heavier hand; it takes less adjustment before he steps away and nods in satisfaction.

When Madeleine at last dares to look at his reflection on the wall, he does not know what he expects to find - but he sees only a man in a fine new coat; there is an inch of color striped against his chest like dried blood that lends his graying hair a tinge of auburn, but there is no cap, there is no number, there are no shackles. His eyes meet Javert's in the mirror and again it is Javert who looks away first.

Duchamp is waiting for him to say something, he realizes after another moment's silence. "It's - good," he says haltingly, for lack of anything else.

"I should think so," Duchamp says stuffily.

For his offense Madeleine is as quickly packed into the corner of the room as Javert is hustled out of it; when he moves to unbutton the coat Duchamp taps him lightly on the wrist like a schoolmaster and he freezes mid-gesture.

"For the best fit you must let the stitches settle on you," Duchamp says. " _That_ is why Duchamp's clothing is the finest." He gives Madeleine a knowing look and pats his arm. "Stand still and do not slouch!"

And with that he turns the full force of his attention to Javert; it is like stepping into the shade, Madeleine thinks, and lets out a silent relieved sigh - though, mindful of the eyes in the mirror, he keeps his shoulders set, his back straight.

"Cravat, please, monsieur," Duchamp says, though by the time he has finished the words Javert is already untying it, revealing a tall leather stock beneath; he passes the cravat to the tailor and undoes the buckle at the back of his neck, then hands it off as well. Without being asked he begins to undo his waistcoat and Madeleine finds that - he tells himself it is for lack of anything else to do - he is watching Javert's fingers work in the reflection.

If Javert's waistcoat is patched, his shirt is more so; the work is neatly done but still obvious, and Duchamp tsks to himself as he tucks Javert's waistcoat away with Madeleine's. "And the trousers," he says, turning expectantly.

Here Javert hesitates, his fingers lingering at his buttons; it is only an instant, but in Javert an instant's hesitation is as noticeable as a shout. Madeleine feels himself rooted to the ground by the change in him, feels bound to watching as if it is Javert who has some strange secret to keep and Madeleine the dutiful hunter. It is a strange, dizzying reversal.

Before Duchamp can ask again Javert ducks his head and bends to remove his boots, setting them against the wall and out of the way. Madeleine has time only to see that his stockings are brown wool and as darned as his shirt - then Javert's hands are on his buttons, flicking them open with the same unhesitating deftness he had removed his waistcoat.

Javert steps out of the trousers and surrenders them to Duchamp. It is only then, only now, that the strange uneven intimacy registers - that Madeleine is clothed, that Javert stands before him wearing only shirt and stockings. His mind shies away from it. In the mirror he can see that Javert is staring fixedly at the ground, his color a shade deeper than normal; Madeleine looks quickly away, lest their gazes meet by accident, to the midpoint of the strong line of Javert's broad shoulders and the long fall of his queue.

In that instant he forgets they are not alone. When Duchamp passes between them on his way to the table it startles him so much his breath freezes in his throat, his heart leaping up to meet it, and it is all he can do to keep silent, to keep his shudder so small as to be invisible. The slight breeze of the tailor's movements tugs at Javert's loose shirt, pulling it gently against the jut of his hip, the breadth of his thigh; it creates brief shadows, implies secrets. It seems more indecent than if Javert had worn nothing at all. Madeleine has seen naked men; he has seen them bare-chested or barelegged, with clothes glued to their skins with sweat and seawater; and yet watching Javert like this is different; is new. It is worse.

Duchamp is taking forever at the table. Madeleine forces his eyes back up from where they had strayed down along the hem of Javert's shirt and fixes them again on the safe middle of his back. Surely it will not take too long to fit a new pair of trousers; then he will be able to forget this. Once he no longer has to look at that long stretch of bared leg - Javert is so tall that his shirt falls only to his fingertips - he will be able to put these strange thoughts from himself.

But when Duchamp finally returns the fabric in his hands is far too small a handful for it to be trousers; Madeleine watches blankly as he prods Javert into putting his arms out, slides it onto him and brings the pieces to the back. There are laces - he had forgotten the vest, he realizes, Duchamp had mentioned something about a vest--

"Is this necessary," Javert growls through his teeth. Madeleine's eyes flick from the tailor's hands at the small of Javert's back, where he has begun to lace the vest together, to Javert's face. His scowl alone, half-naked as he is, could have made a convict cringe. Beneath his fine new coat, Madeleine's shoulders hunch almost imperceptibly.

Duchamp has the laces done up; he pulls at them to tighten the vest about Javert's waist. "To be fashionable," he says, "one must sacrifice."

Javert's snorted "Sacrifice--!" turns into an unintelligible grunt as Duchamp yanks at the laces harder. Unaccountably the noise makes Madeleine aware that his lips are painfully dry. He licks them, adjusts the set of his shoulders.

"And besides," Duchamp continues, "I have blocked the clothes already to suit it. I have an eye for perfection, monsieur. They will not fit without it and you will have wasted both time and money!"

Their eyes meet in the mirror. It is a disaster. Javert flushes angrily - Madeleine cannot blame him; he has seen how much Javert dislikes charity in the objective and how much more it rankles him when it is personal. To be reminded that he suffers Madeleine's charity while they stand like this, while he is so exposed and can do nothing and say nothing about it - it must cut like a knife.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Duchamp continuing to adjust the lacing - he yanks again, hard, and Javert's chin comes up. He bites his lip, his eyes blaze no less of a challenge, and this time it is Madeleine who looks away. His gaze falls down past Duchamp's hands, along the long narrow line of Javert's side, narrowed by the vest, to the angle of his hip where his shirt no longer hangs loose, but clings closer, rides higher. Several more inches of his thigh are bare from how his shirt is rucked up under the vest - what had seemed indecent before is obscene now.

Javert makes another noise that is somewhere between protest and breathlessness and Madeleine realizes with a sick sinking feeling that there is no denying what it is doing to him; that the sounds he makes and the sight of him half-undressed and laced tight is quickening his blood, his breath. He forces himself to breathe slowly, evenly, but there is nothing he can do about the flush that rises to his own cheeks - God above, let them think it only embarrassment if they look at him - or the hollow feeling in his stomach and the stir of his prick against his thigh.

"There!" Duchamp says. Madeleine's eyes are at last safely fixed on the floor, on the seamed and mended heels of Javert's socks and no higher; Duchamp's feet cross out of his view at last and he hears once again the rustle of cloth. "How is the fit?" he asks from the table.

"How should I know?" Javert says. His voice sounds blessedly normal, if slightly more peeved than usual. Madeleine had been half-afraid that this strange affliction that has taken him had--

Duchamp tsks loudly and crosses back. Javert hisses crossly as he reaches him. "Does it dig in?" Duchamp asks. "Is it painful?"

"No," Javert says. "It--" he cuts himself off. The aura of irritation and singed pride is very nearly palpable.

"Yes, yes?"

"...It is nothing. It fits."

"Good," Duchamp says with satisfaction. There is again the whisper of cloth; he says "Then try these on, if you will, monsieur."

The trousers are a dark, warm gray, the fine double-milled weave and smooth flat drape of the cloth a marked contrast next to Javert's old stockings. Madeleine does not think of the way his shortened shirt must shift and hitch up as he puts them on, lifting one foot after the other; he inspects the floorboards instead as if the secret to Heaven is written on them - for it well may be.

"Yes," Duchamp says after a moment, when Javert has stopped moving, sounding quite pleased with himself. "Excellent. A perfect fit."

"Ah," Javert says dubiously.

When Duchamp kneels down Madeleine almost betrays himself, checks his startle just in time; cannot stop his almost-silent quick breath as the tailor's long thin fingers stroke down Javert's legs, straightening the fabric of the trousers in a motion that looks disturbingly like a caress. He bends further, rolling the hems to the proper height and pinning them there, and it is then that Madeleine realizes that he must have been talking of the fit of the waist alone.

He does not mean to look up again; he cannot help himself. The trouser legs are cut quite slim; Javert's waist, in the grip of the vest, is an inch or two narrower. It makes him look taller; his legs even longer, his shoulders wider. The fall of the trousers is held shut by pins instead of buttons; the metal flashes in the mirror as Javert shifts slightly, widening his stance.

By the time Duchamp has at last finished his hemming, Madeleine has given up his attempts to look only at the floor; his eyes range nearly back up to Javert's shoulders, though by chance or Providence, he has not caught his gaze again. His cock is still heavier than it ought to be - he can still feel the pulse between his legs; it only worsens when he remembers against his will and good sense the sight of fingers pressed against the inseam of gray trousers. He realizes, with a dull sort of terror, that he is wondering what that fabric would have felt like under his own fingers, roughened by labor instead of the needle; what it would feel like to press the soft cloth against the hard thick muscle of Javert's thigh.

Before he can ponder it too long, before he can force himself to think of what it means, Javert is moving again, bending awkwardly at the waist so that Duchamp can reach to get a waistcoat over his shoulders. The movement shakes Madeleine loose of his confusion; it is unpracticed, almost clumsy - it must be the constraint of the vest - it is unlike Javert enough to be startling. So, for that matter, is the waistcoat itself. Javert's civilian clothes - what Madeleine has seen of them - are brown, drab and serviceable; his police uniform, which he sees far more often, a dark blue, severe in cut and in function. The waistcoat Duchamp is tailoring to him is patterned in teal and antique gold, bold and rich; it fits close over the vest with only a few pins needed.

"There," Duchamp says, satisfaction oozing from him; Madeleine risks a glance in the mirror at Javert's face, finds him staring at himself with a skeptical, half-laughing sneer that could almost be funny if the colors and the cut did not somehow, unbelievably, suit him. If, without the scowl, with something that looks halfway to a laugh, he did not look --

He does not have the words to finish the sentence even in his mind; it is too far beyond his experience, beyond his imagination. The sight alone stretches his thoughts more than he had thought possible.

And then Duchamp turns to him - his earlier slight apparently not quite forgiven, if his pointed, smug expression means anything - and says "It suits him, doesn't it, monsieur?"

And what can Madeleine say to that but "Yes."

Unsatisfied, Duchamp presses on: "You see how the cut of the waistcoat flatters the shoulders, the hips?" He gestures as if to trace Javert's body; Madeleine's eyes follow his hand involuntarily down the curve of his waist. The memory of Javert in his shirt and stockings stirs again, unbidden; the thought of touching him, of following Duchamp's hands with his own, is a dark shadow in the back of his thoughts, a demon, a devil he can hold back but not exorcise.

"Yes," he echoes.

Duchamp is merciless, as merciless as Javert. "And the color," he says, tugging Javert by the arm with increasing force until he turns to face Madeleine. "You see the effects of the color, no?"

"Ah," he says, staring at Javert's chest. The white of his sleeves is bright against the vivid color, an unavoidable reminder of things he would rather forget; the pattern draws his eyes upwards, as it was no doubt meant to do, along the tight narrow vee of the waistcoat to the plain cut of Javert's shirt and its worn collar. Without a cravat, the hollow of his throat is bare, framed in white; the dip of his collarbone vanishing beneath his shirt makes Madeleine's fingers twitch at his sides and it is with a mixture of relief and fear that he finally looks up into his face. The bold teal catches in Javert's eyes, deepening their normally pale, cold shade.

Javert stares back at him. He does not look angry, precisely, although a hint of color still lingers across his face. It is instead almost the expression he had worn in Madeleine's office; an ashamed wariness, as if he expects Madeleine to find fault - or force something on him that he does not want but feels he must bear.

"Yes," he says, then casts about for something else to stave off the chance of offending him with faint praise again. "Ah - that is to say, the colors suit him well." It is hard to think while looking at Javert like this, while trying to understand this - this _transformation_ that seems to be happening before him.

"Hmm." Duchamp sends him an appraising look and apparently finds whatever he sees agreeable enough to finally leave it be. He tugs briefly at Javert's waistcoat, then retrieves the last of the clothing from the table: a dress coat in the same warm gray as the trousers.

It too is a snug fit across Javert's shoulders; Javert looks away as he helps Duchamp snug the sleeves up. Madeleine, freed, glances away along the cap of the sleeve and down the long length of his arm, watching the tailor fret at the cuffs.

That excuse does not last forever - when Duchamp is done with the first and switches to the other, he looks up again only to find Javert has been watching _him_ , for how long he does not know; that the uncomfortable look has not left him. When Madeleine's eyes find his, he looks as if he has been caught doing something - untoward. He wets his lips, a tiny flash of tongue that clenches around something deep inside Madeleine, sending his pulse tripping again; beneath the cover of the new frock coat his prick jerks hard and eager against the fall of his trousers; he is horribly aware of the sudden rough friction. Javert's fine new clothes suit him better than Madeleine has words for, but they are after all only a disguise not yet fully realized: a dog in wolf's clothing with its old collar still showing beneath risen hackles. Javert _disheveled_ , an inescapable reminder of how he had stood before Madeleine nearly naked only minutes before; how the fine wool and bright colors conceal almost but not quite wholly the lean and powerful form beneath; how in concealing they display it all the further.

Javert's eyes stray down slight inches, not quite as if looking away in shame, and Madeleine suddenly remembers that if Javert is not wearing a cravat then neither is he; if Javert's open shirt shows a glimpse of throat, then so does his own. It cannot be, he thinks blankly.

Duchamp steps between them to fasten Javert's coat; he is simultaneously grateful for the interruption of sight and thought and peculiarly, startlingly resentful. He does not want to consider what that could mean; what the world might become if it can hold such a thing between two men such as Javert and - Madeleine.

But when, with an exclamation and a flourish, Duchamp steps back to stand beside Madeleine and admire his work, Javert's face has closed, as if with the fastening of his coat the last of his curious vulnerability has gone with it; he wears now only the stern, self-possessed face Madeleine has grown used to.

Below the tight gray coat and the brilliant waistcoat, Javert's shirt still gapes indecently. It feels like a magnet tugging at his gaze, an iron weighing him down, but now that Javert looks mostly himself again it is easier to resist. He finds a smile, pulls it to his lips; strengthens his will and ignores the way that his cock is if anything only stiffer at the strange merging of the familiar and the unknown.

"It is an excellent fit," he says, and his voice, thank God, does not betray him; "I was right to think of bringing our business here. Your work is--"

Duchamp seizes his hand and shakes it; Madeleine, out of the corner of his eye, sees Javert twitch as if to protest, then subdue himself, and then Duchamp is saying, "Yes, yes - I knew you would see it, monsieur; now imagine the full effect - ah yes. And see yourself as well--" He shifts his hand up, grasps Madeleine by the forearm and tugs him forward to stand beside Javert; turns them both to look into the same mirror. "Even unfinished, yes, you see now how it will be!"

They make a strange pair: even in his stocking feet Javert is several inches taller and the narrowness of his girdled waist, the tight cut of his jacket only emphasize it; the double line of waistcoats beneath his own new coat seems to Madeleine's eye to make himself look broader. And yet, at the same time, the fabric is equally fine; the cuts and the angles are different, but the same artist's hand is behind each one. In a way, they look more equal, standing there in the mirror in their pinned half-sewn finery with Duchamp beaming between them, than they ever have - which is, in a way, only natural: these clothes are just as much a disguise for Madeleine as for Javert.

It is something he must not forget, no matter what new hungers chew at his soul.

Duchamp does not take notice of his thoughts. "And you, monsieur," he says, looking up at Javert, "you are satisfied, too, I trust?"

In the mirror Javert's mouth twists wryly. "It will serve admirably," he replies.

"Admirably," Duchamp says under his breath with a theatrical sigh, and turns to Madeleine again. "Now, monsieur, your letter of last week mentioned only daywear; I should ask whether there is anything else?"

Madeleine glances up and catches Javert's eyes questioningly; receives a barely noticeable shake of his head as answer - though whether that means Javert really thinks more is unnecessary or whether he simply does not wish to be any further in debt, he is not sure. "Not at present," he says.

"Well, in any case, I must have three days more for the finishing," Duchamp says. "Although, messieurs, I shall keep your measurements - if you find you are in need of anything else - formal breeches, perhaps? Or a change of waistcoats - then you have only to send me a letter and it will be simply the two fittings. And for you, of course, as quickly as possible." He smiles winningly; though Madeleine can almost hear the clink of coin behind it, he does not begrudge the money spent in exchange for speed and secrecy.

"Of course," he agrees mildly.

"Excellent," Duchamp smiles. "Now, if you do not mind, I will make some notes for my finishers; if you will be patient a moment longer so that I may see how the clothes adjust to wear - walk about a bit perhaps?"

Beside Madeleine, Javert shifts his weight and crosses his arms.

Duchamp nods encouragingly, crossing to the now-empty table and perching upon it. "Yes, excellent, just so. Move as you might normally move through the course of a day." Slipping a thin notebook from the breast of his jacket, he scribbles furiously into it with a pencil-stub.

The fitting room is only wide enough for Madeleine to take a handful of paces from side to side; he does so anyway, turns on his heel and crosses again. It is not wide enough for him to ignore Javert, but with motion and motive he hopes to forget the immediacy of his presence - or at least to dull it enough that he does not disgrace himself when he has to surrender the concealment of the frock coat. He reminds himself of the terrible and present danger, of the weight at his wrist and throat, of the bite of the lash and the cramp of the splintered plank. They are things he does not often think about, and never while Javert is near - they are things from another life, things that happened to another man, a man whose name is long dead, a man who could not stand here in this room being looked at with respect and interest.

He does not allow his stride or his face to change; the chill of remembered chains that wraps around his soul cools his blood but does not entirely muzzle the hunger. Casually, as if he moves only on Duchamp's instruction, he brushes at the sleeves of his coat. Perhaps these thoughts, dark as they are, are too connected to Javert to dispel his madness completely. Prompted by the scratch of pencil on paper, he turns his mind instead to his own notes, still hidden safely in the drawer of his office desk. Where there are small petty thefts, there is poverty; the law sees only the crime, but Madeleine cannot help but see the hurt behind it.

There is not much he can do for them in an official context; there is the factory - he has further plans; if he can find support for a sanitization project - but they suffer now, and Monsieur le maire's hands are as bound by bureaucracy as ever a convict's were shackled in irons. But a handful of untraceable money, left as a gift for those who will not or cannot beg it openly, by some method with which no one will credit him - it may save lives, it may feed children, it may spare some poor man a choice no one should have to make.

He is planning how it may be best done, where and how he will go about it without being seen, when Duchamp speaks, startling him out of the thoughts that had consumed him more thoroughly than he had hoped.

"Good, good," he is saying; there is the clatter of the pencil dropped to the table, and then Duchamp is crossing the room to him. He blinks away the last of the vision of Montreuil in darkness and halts so that the tailor can adjust the placement of a few pins and marks, then remove the coat from him.

As Duchamp carefully folds the coat and carries it back to the table, Madeleine's eyes stray again. At the other side of the room, Javert leans against the wall, his arms still crossed, head tilted downwards. It is a familiar pose; Madeleine has seen him often so waiting in thought, at the edges of alleyways, beside the police station, in the hallways of the factory while Madeleine's other appointments are running too long. His face is studiously neutral, lips drawn into their natural grim line.

The embers have not left his blood, though his distraction cooled them; he feels that tightness beginning to coil in his belly again and turns his head away, pretending he shifts only to help Duchamp remove the waistcoats. When he darts a glance at Javert, he has not moved nor looked up; it is as if he is cast in implacable stone; still, when Madeleine reties his cravat, buttons his own waistcoat, and shrugs into his old coat, it is with more than a little relief.

And, when Duchamp turns to Javert and begins to undress him, though he begins of course with the coat, it seems to Madeleine that the better part of valor certainly is discretion. "Messieurs," he says, and takes his leave; it is not until he is in the street that he lets himself sigh, a trembling release of an hour's tension all at once. He does not know what he feels anymore; all of it - fear, arousal, hunger, horror - is a tangled mess in the pit of his stomach.

He forces himself to stand still as he waits for Javert, his hands in his pockets, taking deliberately slow, deep breaths. He wants to pace freely, to give leash to his restlessness and determine what this is - what on earth he can do - whether he has not made a terrible mistake in deciding to hold this particular devil, this enemy, so very close. But the open street is no place for that, even if it is not in his own town; he locks it up, buries it deep and waits as silently as he had once watched condemned men await their deaths.

Javert emerges from the tailor's several minutes later, looking none the worse for wear; his cravat - Madeleine finds he cannot help glancing at it - tied in the same neat, unfussy knot it had held earlier in the day, his drab clothes in order. He catches Madeleine looking and returns him a curt nod.

They do not speak of the fitting on the long road back to Montreuil; they do not, in fact, speak at all.

 

 

As soon as they return the business of town and factory overtakes Madeleine in a sudden flood as if he had been gone for a week instead of half a day; it seems as if everyone he meets has a question or a problem that cannot be solved by anyone else. When at last he finds his way to the sanctuary of his own room, instead of worrying at the problem of Javert he falls into bed and sleeps deeply and dreamlessly.

The next two days are no better; he is penned inescapably behind his desk speaking to magistrates and masters alike. By the third evening he feels his cravat pinching too tight at his throat and his shirtcuffs catching at the old scars they hide. When he at last manages to escape the factory he heads homewards by lesser-used sidestreets and, on arriving, dismisses the concerns of the portress and bars himself in.

Madeleine's nerves are wound tight as beading wire; his skin feels a cage in itself. He paces the length of his room for long hours, stopping occasionally in front of the mantle to run his fingers across the polished silver of the candlesticks there, but it does not help, it is not enough, and finally, when the walls begin to close in, he takes up as much money as he has in the house, wraps it carefully in a cloth to keep it from clinking as he walks, tucks the bundle into his pocket, and sets out.

The night is dark outside; the sky cloudy, the moon barely a sliver, and in his dark overcoat it is easy to go unseen so long as he stays out of the circles of lamplight that grow sparser as he goes down into the lower city. Here, Javert had said the week before, just before he had asked to send to Paris: here a rash of petty thefts, there a man arrested but released for lack of evidence. Madeleine's hand slips into his pockets; his fingertips brush the cloth and, hidden away in the seam of the pocket, a long metal pin. He draws it out, holds it hidden in his hand, stays still, waiting, listening.

He hears only the normal night noises of the town, sees no twitches at windows nor anyone on the streets; quickly he crosses the street and sets pick deftly to lock. Within the minute he is in and the door shut behind him; there is a strange familiar feeling curled inside him; he tries not to think of the past, of how it takes a prison to make a thief of a man - there is little time for that, when there is the future to consider instead.

The tenement is not terribly large; he knows by Javert's reports that there are three lodgers, all poor, all desperate, though only the man on the top floor has - so far - come to police attention. The louis in his coat pockets feel heavy with the weight of debt and responsibility; he does not feel like he can deny any of them, though he had only come for one; he begins at the first door, lets himself silently inside. He can hear someone snoring softly the moment he is through the door; carefully he makes his way through the dim apartment, following the sound, until he stands at the bedside of a man of uncertain age.

He is struck by a sudden memory, so vivid it seems almost as if the world has shifted beneath his feet, has fled away into an unknown future and left him stranded in the past: another small room, another man standing over an unknowing dreamer, his thoughts tangled and scarred, his hands full of silver. It steals his breath away; it lingers for a moment; and then it is gone and he is himself again; Monsieur le maire stands with gold in his pocket over a poor man in need of aid.

Madeleine undoes the bundle and by feel withdraws two louis; he holds them for a moment, praying without voice that he does the right thing, and lays them atop the small stand beside the bed. In the next apartment there is no one at home; the bed is made but empty and he leaves the coins and the prayer beneath the too-thin blanket.

Halfway up the rickety staircase just before the final landing he stops to listen; inside someone is coughing terribly, consumptively. Seconds later there is a thump and the sounds of a man cursing loudly; he has begun to think of coming back some other night when beneath the other noise he hears a baby's cry. He is up the remaining stairs in an instant, the lockpick in his hand - though as it turns out, the latch is open and he has no need of it.

He eases the door open gently, lifting at the handle as someone long ago had once told him to do lest the hinges squeak and the police be called. Even if they had, the cursing is worse now; the baby's crying has been joined by a woman's, broken in sharp jags between coughing fits, and Madeleine enters the split garret unheard. There is a small broken-legged table in the otherwise-barren room; on it he leaves the rest of his money - God knows it is not enough, it will not heal a cough like that, most likely, even if it pays for a hospital bed. But it is something.

They are small gifts, these little things, and there will be no thanks, no praise, no one will ever know it was him - but as he creeps back down the stairs he feels the weight of the past few days slowly beginning to melt away, as if he leaves it behind as well; when he closes the front door behind himself he stands upright; as he begins the walk back through his town, climbing the hill towards the rampart, his steps are firmer and more certain. It had been - almost easy. Fitting, in a way that simple alms were not. It had--

He turns the corner and finds himself face to face with Javert.

They do not - quite - run into each other, although he feels the shock might have been less if they had; at least then he could blame the way his heart stutters on the physical impact. There is silence between them; no words, not even a breath; it is as if all of the air has vanished from the narrow handspan that separates them.

Javert's eyes are wide with surprise, his face open with recognition, his lips half-parted; Madeleine's eyes catch on his mouth and he remembers, beyond will or control, the slight flick of Javert's tongue in Duchamp's shop. "Javert," he says, before he can think better of it and use his title instead. His own lips twitch upward nervously; his nerves cannot decide whether to freeze or flee. "Good evening," he says instead. It is ridiculously casual and out of place; it seems to confuse Javert yet further.

"Ah," Javert says. "Monsieur--" His eyes flick downwards briefly and he swallows; Madeleine hears it loud in the silence that muffles them; sees the working of his throat beneath his tight-buckled stock. His gaze lingers a second too long on Madeleine's cravat before returning to his face. "Good evening," he returns.

The thing that had flashed between them in the shop is back; it is dulled by the shield of Javert's uniform and choked on the chain of Madeleine's office, but it lurks in the darkness nevertheless; he can see the reflection in Javert's eyes as it must be visible in his own. And, if it is muddling the excuses in his mind, so it seems also to be keeping suspicion from Javert. It is only a slight reprieve, he knows - he must not rely on it. "You will be ready early tomorrow morning?" he says, in attempts to direct the conversation outward, towards the future; the recent past seems nearly as dangerous as dead history.

Javert nods. "I have not forgotten, monsieur."

"Good," Madeleine says, and is struck by sudden clarity of inspiration: they are not far from a warehouse of his near the riverside. If Javert asks why he is abroad at night, he might use it as an excuse. The past two days have been so busy they might have provided any number of reasons for him to visit it. Boldened, he presses on: "But it is late, Javert - surely your patrol is nearly finished."

Unaccountably, this seems to fluster Javert still further - he blinks owlishly at Madeleine; his lips close, then part again, and still it is a moment longer before he says "Yes, monsieur - nearly."

It is perhaps not likely that, should the residents of the tenement notice that they had been burgled, they would call for the police before noticing they had gained rather than lost. But it is _possible._ Madeleine shivers faintly, crushing the stirring, long-buried memory of another house, a broken window-- "Perhaps we might walk together," he says, taking care to pitch his voice in a tone between request and order, equally interpretable in either direction.

The street is quiet enough that he hears the low hitch of Javert's breath; it is not quite a gasp. If he had not already felt the spark flaring again between them, he might have thought it a nothing, a coincidence - as it is he again feels lust curling around the fear, threatening to drown it entirely and plunge him into danger and darkness. His face heats with realization; with knowledge and temptation; he prays that the night conceals it.

He remembers the too-human surprise Javert had been startled into days ago; he had thought it a crack in his armor then; he cannot forget it now. "Well?" he says. "Shall we - if it is not too far out of your way?" Javert had been traveling, of course, in the direction from which Madeleine had come, in the direction Madeleine does not wish him to continue; by necessity it must be out of his way.

But when at last Javert shakes off his surprise, his eyes lower again, breaking their gaze; he nods briefly. "Of course, monsieur," he says. "I am at your-- convenience."

"Excellent," Madeleine says, and, as they pass beneath a guttering streetlamp, smiles again so that Javert will see no fear.

Javert paces evenly beside him, shortening his stride without comment to match Madeleine's, and soon they have reached Madeleine's door. Madeleine pauses on the step, his hand on the latch - he closes his eyes briefly, hardly more than a blink, in gathering his courage, and turns back once more.

Javert stands on the curb as still as a pillar, his eyes fixed on Madeleine. Where once Madeleine might have read wariness into that look, in the darkness he sees - nothing, no suspicion; a man awaiting orders and nothing more. The fear of discovery recedes still further, replaced by lower things; by imagination expanding on memory. "Good night, Inspector," he says, before his mind can be entirely overtaken. "'Til morning."

At the sound of his voice Javert starts, but recovers himself quickly and draws himself up to tender a bow with perfectly correct precision. "Good night, monsieur."

 

 

When Madeleine sleeps at last, the few hours before dawn are restless and fitful. He dreams in broken snatches; not of being pursued, as he often does, but but of being invisible entirely, an unheard, untouchable ghost in a small plain room not altogether different from his own; of watching Javert as he has often felt Javert has been watching him, ceaselessly and without mercy, an unasked and unwilling reversal.

He wakes as tired as if he had not slept at all. His morning coffee rouses him slightly, as does the last of the business bound for the morning's post which he completes, as always, over breakfast, but he still feels half-asleep as he walks out in the early morning light; his greetings to the people he passes in the street are more subdued than usual, and it is not until he has reached the mairie that he manages to shake off most of his lethargy. The coach is waiting already, though he is not more than a minute or so late, and beside it, by the stone wall of the building, Javert waits as well.

His stance is the familiar one that Madeleine had observed in the tailor's - shoulders flat against the wall, head tilted down in contemplation - and the connection of the memory shocks Madeleine's mind to full consciousness in a rush; he takes a small gasping gulp of air, squares his shoulders, and crosses the street.

At the sound of his footsteps as he draws near, Javert looks up; it seems to Madeleine that Javert, too, looks tired - he is as neat as ever, to be sure; his hair perfectly in place, his clothes in order - but there is perhaps a new and unusual shadow in his eyes as he looks Madeleine over and nods in greeting; the tiniest of hesitancy in his movement as they board the coach.

Madeleine is not often given to dwelling on his dreams, unless they are particularly striking and vivid, which is rarely the case. Perhaps, he thinks, it is that the subject of his last night's disturbances is trapped so near; in any case he finds that the half-remembered fragments are reluctant to wholly fade. His thoughts are a muddle of reality and imagination; he watches Javert as he again stares unseeing out the window of the coach; he imagines him as he had dreamed him: half-dressed, the placket of his uniform coat open and gaping, revealing the old shirt beneath, his throat bared; in a nightshirt, standing at the window, checking the street once more; asleep, tossing in slumber as restless as Madeleine's own.

He is not entirely sure where dreams end and daydreams begin - only that far sooner than he had expected the carriage is drawing to a halt. Blinking the figments away, he steps out and leads the way to the shop. It will be almost strange to be done with this; three times almost make a habit. He reminds himself that growing too familiar, letting his guard down, around Javert is a habit he cannot afford, for all of his money, a danger too great to be dismissed - but the words are only words; they are dead, they do not conjure the gripping terror they once held; worry remains, and wariness, and - the thing he cannot quite put a name to, the thing which borders on sick fascination.

Madeleine's hand is halfway to the door when he remembers the shirts. The _shirts_ \- he had agreed with Duchamp that Javert would need a new shirt - no doubt the tailor would insist that he try it on below the suit - that he would have to remove the old one. The thought lashes through him like lightning, burning forked paths along his nerves; he cannot conceive how he will stand the reality. When he had agreed to it before he had thought nothing of it; now in a handful of days everything has changed.

"Monsieur," Javert says. He has been standing motionless too long.

If Madeleine turns, he is sure that Javert's eyebrow will be raised in skepticism - in curiosity - in suspicion. He shakes his head as if to dislodge an errant thought; uses the moment to regather his scattered wits and grasp for a lie. "Forgive me," he says, and sets his hand firmly on the door, opening it without further hesitation. "It struck me suddenly that I had forgotten a letter for this morning's post. It is nothing."

Duchamp welcomes them as eagerly, as effusively as ever, ushering them back into the now-familiar fitting room; the table is once again stacked high with clothes. Madeleine's eyes linger long enough to pick out the white linen cuff of a shirtsleeve in one pile; he covers his nervous twitch in removing his coat and hat, then loosening his cravat and passing it over as well.

"Good, good," Duchamp says, taking it from him and setting it carefully aside. "And the rest as well, monsieur; we shall fit you first again, today, on account of the waistcoats."

Madeleine unbuttons his waistcoat, feeling as if he has been given an unwanted stay of execution, a prolongment of a torment with an inevitable end. The white-and-cream waistcoat fits him neatly; Duchamp buttons it up and pats across his shoulders to settle the fabric, then stands back to look at him with a critical eye, ducking about in his birdlike way to look at what surely must be all angles at once.

Finally he makes a pleased noise and fetches the second waistcoat. This time Madeleine is prepared; his breathing is steady, his heart barely jumps as Duchamp slides the cloth onto him and draws it tight. As Duchamp tugs at it, arranging it to his taste over the first, Madeleine's eyes stray up from his fingers to the mirror. He means at first only to reassure himself that it is a waistcoat and not a cassock, that the face above the red is still the cleanshaven face of a decent man.

The man he sees in the tailor's mirror is the same man who had looked out at him from the shaving-mirror earlier that morning; he sees no change, unless it is in the tired shadow that still lingers on his brow. But when in meeting his own gaze he meets Javert's as well, there the transformation is written plain in the lean wolfish hunger that fills Javert's eyes and spills over into the set of his lips and the tension of his shoulders. It stirs within him as well, as if jumping from Javert's eyes to his own, a contagion of heat; he looks down before he can feel more than the first searing curls of it, but he is still relieved when Duchamp tilts his head aside to snug a fresh white cravat about his throat and tuck the tails neatly beneath the waistcoats - and more yet when he swirls the frock coat about him and buttons it neatly shut.

With a final brush across his chest - the hands are impersonal, the shudder in Madeleine's spine rather less so - Duchamp pronounces him "Perfect!" and beckons Javert forward to take his place before the mirror. Their arms brush by accident of the small room - coat against shirtsleeve - as Madeleine retires to the back corner. It is a little touch, a nothing; it stirs in him the desire for more: to not only see - this he will not be able to avoid - but to touch as he had imagined before.

By the time Javert begins to unbutton his waistcoat Madeleine is already half-hard with anticipation; when he bends, in shirt and trousers, to remove his boots, he cannot keep his eyes from the line of his back, the narrow curve of his buttocks, the length of his thigh. And then Javert straightens, and without looking into the mirror or waiting for instruction begins to unbutton his trousers. This time Madeleine, bound by the look that had flashed between them, does not look away as he steps out of them, baring his legs; he sees the slight, almost-hidden shudder as Duchamp says, "And your shirt, please, monsieur."

Javert does not protest or ask if it is necessary; he seems almost mechanical in the way he moves at once to obey the order. He draws the shirt up over his head in one smooth motion and Madeleine's eyes follow the hem up his revealed back: the shifting, sleek muscle, the long fine groove of his spine and the jut of his shoulderblades. When Javert tugs the shirt free of his queue with a jerk of his head and peels it down off his arms, Duchamp presses the new one into his hands; Madeleine drops his gaze instinctively, lest the tailor notice his unnatural interest. It is a mistake.

In the mirror Javert's prick hangs thick and heavy between his thighs, flushed dark with the same shame that stirs Madeleine; it is still soft, though only barely. Under his gaze it stirs; his own cock twitches as if in answer. Madeleine finds his eyes are too dry and his mouth too wet; he swallows, blinks - and then in the space of that second Javert has shrugged into the new shirt and begun to button the cuffs.

The new shirt is longer, having been tailored for Javert as the old must not have been; it falls to mid-thigh as it should, concealing the full length of his prick. Madeleine feels the absence as a snarl in his gut, a hunger unto starvation, a slow and consuming ache that brings him hard despite the pain. He keeps his arms firmly by his sides, lest he unthinkingly touch himself, and only realizes when his nails bite into his palm that he has fisted his hand unknowingly in a hollow grip, that his fingers curl as they might if he took his prick in hand - or Javert's-- He crosses his arms across his chest firmly and leans back into the wall, mimicking Javert's posture; he does not trust himself to remain upright.

He still cannot stop watching the slow reconcealing of Javert's form. For long minutes he stands there in shirt alone as Duchamp examines the seamstress' work, and Madeleine finds himself unconscionably, blackly jealous of each innocent brush of the tailor's fingers over Javert's broad shoulders and strong arms. And then there is the vest; the slight shift of Javert's breathing as Duchamp laces him closely, the pronounced curve of his waist and the shortening of his shirt inch by inch until Madeleine can almost but not quite make out the head of his cock below the trailing edge - he must be content with seeing the subtle rest of the tightened linen against the thick width of his shaft. He cannot be content.

The flex of Javert's thighs as he steps into the gray trousers is a small torment; the not quite sufficient shift of his shirt, another. Javert buttons first the waistband, then the fall, and Madeleine finds that even now it is hard to shift his eyes away; that the trousers are cleverly cut in such a way that they accent the length and power of his legs, that the dark color makes it easy for him to imagine the shadow of Javert's hard prick pressed in an obscenely thick full curve against the buttoned fall. Duchamp seems satisfied with them as well - at least he does not again kneel to adjust them, a small mercy for which Madeleine is wordlessly grateful. Instead he helps Javert with the waistcoat, snugging it neatly to him where Javert's movements are still slightly awkward from the constriction of the vest.

When it is buttoned, Duchamp stands back and smiles. "As for cravats," he says, "I have added a half dozen white to the account for occasions that require them, but for day wear, monsieur, I recommend the colored." From the table, he produces a gold-and-teal square patterned to match the waistcoat and folds it neatly. It takes a small stepstool for him to reach Javert's throat, but with an "If you will tilt your chin, monsieur--" he has the cravat tied and tucked perfectly in a showy knot quite as quickly as he had managed Madeleine's more conservative one.

Duchamp again uses the stepstool to settle the dress coat across Javert's shoulders, muttering incomprehensibly to himself as he works, and then when he has finished and dismounted, tucks it back beneath the table and claps his hands together. The sudden noise makes them both startle. "Messieurs -- have I not done as I said? Have I not produced art? Oh yes, yes." He beams at them both, gesturing at the mirror in invitation for Madeleine to come forward, for them both to look. Madeleine does, standing by Javert's side again. The room feels suddenly far too hot for the fine wool of his coat, but he does not dare to remove it, and not for fear of the tailor's wrath.

"You have," Javert says, when Madeleine's throat does not unstop itself in time for words. "It is... not what I expected. But it is better." He is not, Madeleine sees quite clearly, looking at his own reflection.

"As it should be," Duchamp says with the air of _amen_ and the smile of a saint. "The fit and finishing are perfect, messieurs; I do not think any further alterations will be needed - but if you would again move as normal for a few minutes."

No amount of pacing or of thought will banish the heat in the room, fueled unbelievably as it is by both of them at once; Madeleine steps away in any case, turning towards the wall again. He has not taken three steps before the jangle of the shop bell sounds, muffled through the door of the fitting-room, and someone calls Duchamp's name in a hushed yet urgent tone.

Duchamp produces a pocket watch, and, glancing at it, a stormy frown. "Ah," he says, "Please forgive me - there must have been a problem with the scheduled shipments; I _told_ René that-- ah, excuse me. I will hardly take a moment - perhaps ten minutes - if you would please walk about in any case, I will examine the fit when I return!" Without waiting for a response he hurries past Madeleine and out the door; it swings shut behind him with a solid click, leaving them alone.

Madeleine stands still, his back to Javert, staring at the door, for a long moment. His first instinct is to turn, to look, to take what he finds there, what he has wanted - but he is not entirely sure what will be there when he looks; below the obscene desire there still lurks doubt and fear. How can it be that Javert - of all people - is subject to the same affliction; how can it be that this thing has apparently struck them both down at once? Might it be only his own fevered imagination, inventing willingness in place of obedience and desire where there is only duty?

"Monsieur le maire," Javert says.

Before he has quite realized what he is doing, Madeleine turns. Javert stands in the middle of the room, straightbacked and tall, watching him as he had watched him from the curb the night before. The devil between them lashes out, strikes them both; the hunger is as clear on Javert's face as Madeleine had seen it before - this is surely no imagination, no invention of his diseased mind.

He breathes in sharply; in the small room it seems loud as a shout. Something brighter kindles behind Javert's eyes at the sound, but still he stays where he stands, as if his stocking feet are nailed to the floor. When Madeleine's glance falls involuntarily to Javert's trousers he can see now the thick shadowed outline that he had only imagined before; his eyes jerk back up in time to see Javert wet his lips and say again: "Monsieur--"

It feels to him as if he no longer knows right from wrong or what is to be done; this thing between them, this thing he feels and which he thinks Javert must as well, it is something entirely outside his experience, beyond his knowledge, as foreign and as alien as the stars. And yet it is here, within reach - as Javert is within reach -

There is a distance of perhaps four paces between himself and Javert; he takes only two before they stand suddenly together, Javert's hands set on the curve of his shoulders almost as if to hold him off, his own finally at Javert's waist. Beneath the layers of smooth cloth he can feel the stiff constraint of the vest, the hard edges of the boned ribs - he wraps one hand around to Javert's back, remembering the way he had wanted to trace every inch of it. "God," he whispers, a prayer for the sense which has fled him completely, and lets the other drop to cover the thick line of Javert's cock where it strains too tightly against his trousers. It jerks under his touch; at the tentative stroke of his fingers, Javert makes a half-choked indistinct sound, his hands clenching bruise-tight about Madeleine's upper arms.

"What do you wish of me?" Javert asks. His voice is lower than usual - unsteady, as Madeleine has never heard it before; when Madeleine continues to gently trace the outline of his still-swelling prick, his breath shudders in his chest. "Monsieur le maire -- I had thought that, _ah!_ I had thought that last night you would order me inside. When you didn't I thought I had been mistaken entirely. Now, that you should do this - you, monsieur, for me - it's not--"

Madeleine's thumb finds the head of his cock where it stretches the new wool, sliding rough and lewd against the ridge of the crown and then past over the tip and Javert's words dissolve into nothingness; he grasps at Madeleine for balance, his hips shuddering slightly against Madeleine's hand as if it takes all of his formidable will to restrain them.

Javert tries again: "It's not right that you should do this for me." But his usual cold sternness at witnessing a breach of propriety, an upset in social order, is broken; when Madeleine looks up into his face he sees no accusation, no judgement, only terrible longing. It looses something within him, something long tied.

"If I say it is right," he says, though he does not know if it is right or wrong, only that he wants it, at the moment, more than he wants anything else in the world: to sate the ravening beast that stalks them both, to touch and be touched in return.

Javert's fingers loosen finally on his arms; the rush of blood into bruised flesh stings and Madeleine's breath trembles. But Javert does not protest again; he instead strokes gently, awkwardly over the tense muscle of Madeleine's arms, as though he is as awkward and new in this as Madeleine himself and does not know where to put his hands or how to touch.

The thought reminds him of his earlier desire; now there is nothing stopping him from taking what he wants, and he slides his hands to span Javert's flanks, fingers learning the curve of his buttocks, the angle of his hips; he lets them fall lower yet, pressing the cloth against his skin. When he has reached as far as he can he moves one hand back to Javert's waist; the other he brings slowly up the inside of his thigh, tracing the inseam inch by inch, his fingertips alive with the heat of Javert's body.

Javert trembles beneath his touch; when Madeleine reaches the fork of his trousers and presses there, fingers crooking to cup his balls, the heel of his hand hard against the base of his cock, he makes another stifled noise and rocks forward, rutting against Madeleine's wrist. "Monsieur," he says once again, though this time it is openly a plea.

Madeleine strokes him once more with the flat of his hand, drawing it along the full length of Javert's cock where it stretches out his trousers, cupping his hand about the bulge to guess at the heft, the weight. If he continues like this there will be no explaining it - but it is an excuse, it is only an excuse for how much he wants to feel Javert's bare skin against his own, to wrap his hand around his prick with no barriers between them.

He unbuttons the fall of Javert's trousers before he can lose his nerve. Javert gasps sharply and sags against him as if struck when his prick is freed, wrapping one arm about Madeleine's shoulders and leaning into him to support himself. He swallows; the sound is loud against Madeleine's ear, as are the shallow pants that follow.

When Madeleine finally takes hold of him, he thinks he must take nearly as much pleasure in it as Javert does. His fingers stretch to contain him, the feel is familiar and yet shockingly new, and the first long slow stroke he takes wrings a desperate noise from them both at once. It makes him think unavoidably, inexorably of Javert's strong hand grasping his own prick, which before he had not dared to imagine. "Javert," he says, leaning harder against him, pressing his forehead into Javert's shoulder. He does not know how to ask for what he wants; the words escape him wholly.

Javert bucks against his hand at the sound of his name, driving his prick through Madeleine's fist in an urgent uncontrolled thrust. Madeleine shifts, shoving his own cock roughly against Javert's thigh, seeking the relief of pressure despite the chafing tightness of his trousers. When his hand reaches the tip of Javert's prick again he strokes the pad of his thumb over the bared head and it comes away slippery-wet. "Monsieur," Javert says breathlessly, "let me--" and then the hand that had been on Madeleine's side is between them, unbuttoning the frock coat and pushing it open; rubbing at the front of his trousers.

It is awkward - Javert is too tall, the vest keeps him from stooping to accommodate the difference in their heights, they are leant precariously against one another - and yet Madeleine has never been so desperate, his own hands have never stirred him so. He pushes Javert backwards step by step until he has pinned him against the wall; Javert yields willingly before him and allows Madeleine to brace him and pull him downwards, his knees bending where his waist cannot until they are almost of a height. He bows his head over Madeleine's shoulder and at last loosens the grip of his arm, using both hands to fumble open the buttons of Madeleine's trousers and pull his cock free.

His hand is large, his fingers rough - it feels like Heaven entirely, and Madeleine cannot hold back the sob of his breath. He steps nearer yet, between Javert's thighs, into his hand, until their chests press together with the quick rhythm of shallow breaths, until as they stroke each other their wrists cross and their knuckles clash roughly. Madeleine's fingers are thoroughly wetted now; as their hands brush together Javert's hand grows slick as well, his grip smoother and tighter.

Javert settles his arm around Madeleine again, pulling him into a close embrace - their hands crash together again - and Madeleine leans into him helplessly, uncontrollably, pushing into his fist again and again, pressing their hands closer together until with a gasping breath Javert opens his hand and Madeleine's prick thrusts against Javert's, hot and hard and shameless, and Madeleine blasphemes unthinkingly. He loosens his own fist, presses their cocks closer together until they are thrusting against each other openly, hands joined.

Madeleine's pulse is racing as if he has run for hours; beneath him Javert's heart thunders in time. He cannot last, he knows it - every jerk of his hips, every stroke of their hands pulls him closer and closer to an edge from which there can be no recovery. And Javert is panting aloud now, sweet half-voiced noises with each breath that do not quite form intelligible words: surely if Madeleine is close he is as well.

No sooner has he thought it than Javert's fingers tighten at his shoulder. "Monsieur," he says hoarsely, "please-- I--"

He had not thought to hear Javert beg, had thought him too proud, too contained; it drags a low moan from him that he had not meant to voice. He had not known it would fire him so to hear Javert abase himself like this, to seek permission so fervently, so devoutly, here, with Madeleine's hand on his heavy straining prick; to hear suspicion replaced with supplication.

" _Please_ ," Javert gasps again, rutting forwards against him in short, quick thrusts that threaten to bring him off too soon, "please, I must-- I will--"

There is a handkerchief in his pocket. It takes all of Madeleine's will to release Javert's back and fumble for it, to move away enough to drop it between them, across their fists. No sooner is it there than Javert breaks at last, pushing forward in one last deep thrust and spilling in wet bursts into their hands, slickening their grip beyond measure.

He lasts barely seconds longer -- the hot flood of Javert's seed against his cock, the heavy jerking twitches as he spends over them both, the sharp draw of his breath and the shuddering, sated sigh that follows -- he bites his lip, turns his face against Javert's chest, into the soft curve of his waistcoat, and is lost.

When his breathing slows at last and his legs feel steady enough to support him without trembling, Madeleine slowly loosens his fingers, pulling back a step. Javert lets him go, awkwardly sliding his arm off his shoulders and straightening against the wall. Madeleine's handkerchief is tangled in Javert's fingers, mostly concealing his slowly softening cock; by some miracle it has caught almost all of their spend. Javert carefully cleans himself with a dry corner and fixes his trousers, then glances to Madeleine, his cheeks coloring faintly.

"Allow me, monsieur," he says, and before Madeleine can stop him Javert is on his knees before him, using the last clean inches of the handkerchief to dry Madeleine's spent prick. His eyes are focused, his face intent, and Madeleine realizes with slow dismay that the madness has not been entirely banished by completion; that their surrender has if anything only strengthened it. He sets his hand on Javert's shoulder as he kneels, his thumb hard against the bright cravat, and Javert bows his head further so that Madeleine cannot see his face.

He is very thorough, his hands far gentler than they had been minutes ago; Madeleine feels the ghost of his breath against the damp skin of his prick and represses a shiver. If he were a younger man -- but that thought is dangerous, and he shies away from it instinctively. Soon enough Javert finishes his task, tucks him back into his trousers, and rebuttons them. When he has done so there are a few wet marks that show on the pale cloth; Javert licks his thumb and wipes at them, dabs them dry, and finally draws Madeleine's frock coat shut overtop and fastens it to hide the stains.

When he does not get up immediately or move to shake off Madeleine's hand, Madeleine clears his throat. "Thank you, Javert," he says, gently presses his shoulder, then reaches down to offer him a hand.

Javert hesitates a moment before taking it and rising to his feet. When he is standing, Madeleine carefully straightens his coat and neatens his cravat; Javert bears the adjustments in stoic silence. When he finishes and glances upwards, the flush has faded from Javert's face; the hunger is replaced by something that is not quite neutrality but that Madeleine does not know how to interpret. If it is confusion, he thinks it must be reflected in his own face like everything else they have unaccountably shared. What they will do now, how this will change his carefully built life, he has no idea and cannot begin to guess.

Before the look grows awkward between them the jangle of the shop bell sounds again and Madeleine takes another step back to a more seemly distance; Javert turns half-away, glancing at himself in the mirror, then crosses the room to the neat stack of their clothes to tuck the wad of ruined handkerchief into the pocket of his old trousers. "I shall have it cleaned," he mutters to the wall.

When Duchamp enters a moment later they are still safely apart and Madeleine has looked into the mirror as well to school his face to pleasant blankness. He is vaguely surprised that he looks the same as ever, that what they have done, whether sin or mistake or inevitability, is not scrawled openly across his face; that it is still the mayor's face he wears, scarless and unshorn.

Duchamp seems to notice nothing, in any case, and the frowning worry that lingers on his brow as he enters turns to a smile quickly enough as he checks them over briefly, pronounces their clothing fit to wear, and produces boxes for the old sets as Javert steps into his boots. Madeleine feels the ridiculous urge to hold his breath as they leave the shop together, but they are not stopped, no explanation is demanded, and they reach the street and the carriage with no trouble.

When they are safely outside, Javert pauses to put on his hat. Madeleine, nearly to the carriage, looks back and finds the transformation suddenly complete: something in his face has shifted as well, something small and yet effecting an immense change; there stands a stranger in Javert's place, a bourgeois gentleman where there had been a policeman in new clothes. He feels the leash slip from his fingers - he wonders briefly if he was not mistaken in attempting to keep Javert so close - and then Javert smiles. It is a friendly smile, not much like his usual grimace, but to Madeleine the fangs behind it shine all the brighter. "Monsieur Madeleine," he says smoothly.

"Monsieur Javert," Madeleine says, and returns it.

**Author's Note:**

> (possibly-nsfw) [awesome illustration](http://alegria888.tumblr.com/post/54055175255/just-a-quick-gift-sketch-for-vouksen-because-i) by Alegria888!


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